My Birthday Present
Last night my husband and I went to see Theresa Caputo Live. Thanks to rush hour traffic, it took two hours to get there and about 15 minutes to find parking. I allowed three and a half hours to make the trip and have dinner, so we left at 4 PM, got there at 6 PM, parked, had burgers at a very nice place across the street from the theater and checked in at 7 PM, a good half hour before the show. We were exhausted.
The Paramount venue holds about one thousand people and the show was sold out. Theresa did not come on until 7:45 PM. I have to say she is looking damn good. The first thing she does is rattle off how she has been talking to the dead since age 4 and how she didn't embrace her gift until later on in life. She wanted to clear up a few things that people post on the internet about her which seemed to make her annoyed. She says that she does not charge those very high rates for personal readings and, in fact, has never raised her fee in the 7 years she has been doing them. The fee for a personal reading is $175 and for a group, $50 per person. She says she does not take the money, but rather, her clients write checks to two charities and it goes directly to them (one being meals on wheels). I'm not sure if I believe this or not. Maybe the people whose readings are used on the show may pay $175, but there have been many reports of her charging a lot more. Who knows? The other thing that had her a little peeved was that people on the internet keep saying she googles information on people in the audience for her readings. She just acted like that was ridiculous and dismissed it. She explains how the departed are always with us if they are in peace, and they see things through our eyes. She says we will get signs or feelings to let us know they are around. We may see a shadow or a glimpse of them or smell perfume, cologne or smoke telling us they are there with us at that moment. The last thing that irked her about the internet is they say she is 52 when she is only 51, everyone laughs. Then she tells us how she communicates with the spirits through signs and symbols that she interprets. Here is where she does some damage control. I have read that people who have seen her live complain that she gets a lot of details wrong when she does readings. Now, in order to rectify this issue, she explains to us that the spirits send her signs and symbols that she interprets from "her life experience," but that the person she is telling needs to frame it in their own personal context. For example, she tells one woman he always brought you red roses for your birthday correct? The woman, who is crying, says yes he always bought red roses for Valentine's day. She tells another guy your grandmother left you something lacy. He seems confused. She suggests maybe a dress or tablecloth. After a few seconds he says she left him a lacy Christmas tree skirt. She says, perfect, all I care about is she is dead and left you something lacy. This new explanation cuts down the number of "mistakes" she makes in the details.
Theresa went around the whole venue, targeting certain people in every section. She would call out things like anyone connect with twins where one died? A few people near me shouted out, but she zeroed on this one man and spent time with him. His wife was a twin and she died. Then she calls out who has the father who died? I'm thinking at least half the people in here have a father who died, but somehow she is drawn to two young women sitting a distance apart in the front and asks them to stand up. She goes back and forth between the two, as both fathers seem to be communicating to her at the same time. Then one woman was getting a better reading so she spent most of the time on her. She did make her way up to where I was sitting and, for a moment, I thought I was going to get lucky, but no. A woman in the row behind me and just a couple of seats away was her next subject. Her daughter had died ten years ago in an accident, but a big piece of the puzzle, as to how and why it happened, is still missing and haunts her. Theresa tells her and you go back to that spot and try to figure out what happened, like a reenactment? The woman nods. She asks if she has a piece of jewelry of her daughter's . . . a necklace? The woman says I have a bracelet. Theresa asks how do you connect with the number three and hearts. The woman gasps, the bracelet has three hearts. I think she read about 12 people altogether last night in every section of the venue so everyone gets to see her up close. A video camera follows her around so she is up on the big screen in front when she is out of view. I think that was very nice. She is very entertaining and funny. In fact, watching her is exactly like watching her television show.
My impression of Theresa's performance last night was she got a lot of things right for a lot of people. How she did that, I can't be sure. I would personally love to believe she can communicate with the dead. Even at a live show, I find myself skeptical and even leaning towards not believing. The people she targeted or zeroed in on shed some real genuine tears and were very emotional. If they were planted in the audience they would have to be actors to break down like that and have it be believable. However, there were times people were shouting out to her when she mentioned a particular type of passing, and she would tell them no, spirit is telling her to stay in this spot or that spot until she finds the person they want to communicate with. She wants us to believe the spirit is taking her over to the location of their loved one. Could be. Or maybe, under all that hair, she has an earpiece and gets messages from her staff about the location of certain guests who they were able to discover some information about from the names and addresses on the tickets. I got my tickets in August, I'm sure many got them early enough for someone to do a social media search and come up with information. If I were a fake medium I would make sure to have one person researched in every section and they make it appear they were randomly called on. I guess for me to really believe I would need a private reading under an assumed name, so I knew she could not have me checked out ahead of time. Then, if she presented me with some information that was true, and that she had no way of knowing, I could be swayed into being a believer. As you all know, I have this blog and my whole life is on it. Using my real name would be a waste of time since she would have all this information at her fingertips. Still, I think I would definitely go to her for a reading at $175 just for the fun of it.
I think Theresa is more of an entertainer in my eyes, than a medium. There are many people who don't believe in her gift, who feel she is scamming vulnerable people into thinking they are hearing from loved ones. I, on the other hand, don't see the harm in what she is doing. I have seen people walk away who have found some measure of peace and a way to move past the grieving and get on with their lives. One woman in the audience said after her father died she stopped celebrating everything. Now maybe she will put up a tree in honor of her father who loved the holidays. So how can you put a price on peace? If it makes people feel better and brings them closure, who cares if she is for real or not? I don't see a problem with it. It's way cheaper than seeing a therapist for years, if in fact she only charges $175. It's too bad that she is so busy there are only a very limited number of readings she has time to do, and most of those have to be for her show. An hour show is hard to fill up. Also, if what I hear from the internet is correct, the waiting list for a reading can be two or more years and she is only one person.
At the end of the day it's up to each individual to decide if they believe in her gift or not. Some people really need to believe so they can get answers they are desperately seeking. For them, having a heavy burden of guilt or regret taken off their shoulders would be a tremendous relief. For others, like me, I'm very skeptical and find it entertaining and actually beneficial to many people. What do you think?
